The Math of Food

by J on April 30, 2010

After I’ve finished a meal and Simon’s still working on bite number five, I have some time to think. During yesterday’s snack of carrots, cheese, and crackers, I started noticing some strong preferences in what went into his mouth. Atypically, he was very consistent. So being the good science teacher that I am, I started recording observations, and soon had a set of mathematical descriptions about his snacking preferences.

Let “carrot,” “cheese,” and “cracker” represent his willingness to consume each item respectively.

cheese > 0

cracker > 0

carrot < 0

So he likes cheese and he likes cracker, but he doesn’t like carrot. What if we mix it up?

cracker + cheese > 0 (as you might expect)

cheese + carrot > 0

cracker + carrot < 0

cracker + carrot + cheese > 0

It would seem that we can conclude:

|carrot| < |cheese|

|cracker| < |carrot|

And therefore:

carrot < cracker < cheese, but

|cracker| < |carrot| < |cheese|

I will leave it as an exercise for the eater to assign a numerical value to each item.